In 8 weeks I will be landing in Antwerp (or as the locals call it, Antwerpen), an oft-passed by city in the Flanders region of Belgium on the border with the Nederlands.
Why? To spend ten months learning - not only how to speak Dutch - the ins and outs of twelve areas of International and European law at Universiteit Antwerpen on their exchange programme.
Having been awarded a scholarship for a 3-week intensive language course before I start classes at the end of September, my time-line of preparation just got cranked up a little! Accommodation to find, transport to book, textbooks to buy, packing to be done, a bike to be hired, goodbyes to be said...the list goes on.
Step one: find somewhere to live. Perhaps easier said than done when trying to figure out the property lingo of another country, what a reasonable price is (and how that translates from Euro to GBP!), what a lease can and cannot say and do, which is the best area close to Stadcampus (City campus - my Dutch is already improving! Not hard since I began with zero comprehension...) and the city centre...
Thank goodness for Kotweb! This little gem of a website is a collaborative project by all higher education centres in the city with set regulations and a fantastic search engine you can use to look around by postal code or by proximity to your campus. Needless to say, I have been using this site a lot in the last few days! Having found a few likely prospects, emails have been sent and I'm now anxiously awaiting replies and hoping they haven't already been leased.
When I've managed to find somewhere, my next battle will be trying to find cheap transport from England to Belgium. More to come soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Feedback on my blogs is always welcome - feel free to leave me a comment!